Just always find this interesting and how it applies today....
According to eighteenth-century Scottish historian Alexander Tytler, the average life span of leading civilizations is just 200 years. If true, the United States, at 200-plus years, may be living on borrowed time. Yes, we are still the world's undisputed superpower. But we are frittering away the economic strength that supports our dominance. In a very short time, we could go from being a superpower to becoming super-powerless. Tytler foresaw the explanation for our present plight. 'A democracy is always temporary in nature,' he wrote. 'It simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government,' because, sooner or later, 'voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the Public Treasury. From that moment on,' Tytler observed, 'the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the Public Treasury, with the result that every democracy will always collapse due to loose fiscal policy'…. Alexander Tytler, whose ideas are sadly neglected these days, made another observation worth pondering. Since the Athenian Republic two millennia ago, he wrote, all democracies have progressed through the same stages: 'From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back again into bondage.